Road Trip Log 001: Holiday in Philadelphia

Launch Story

12/21/2017
Adam Bushey

This Thanksgiving, my wife and I joined the estimated 50.9 million people traveling to celebrate the holiday with their friends and family. After a four-hour drive, we ended up at my sister-in-law’s house in Dallas, PA (a borough in Luzerne County about 15 minutes outside of Wilkes-Barre). The next two days were filled with food, family and some Black Friday shopping. Throughout our time in Pennsylvania, we stumbled across a few cool hidden gems like a 20-foot-tall cow statue and a farm that makes their own ice cream, and even found some free time to explore a few of the areas local running trails.

On Saturday, we woke up early and headed to Philadelphia. The highlight of the 2-hour drive to the City of Brotherly Love was going through the Lehigh Valley Tunnel, which is by far the coolest tunnel I have ever seen…seriously you should check it out!

Once we made it to the city I quickly crossed off one thing on my bucket list by running to the top of the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (A.K.A. The Rocky Steps). Our next stop was Board Game Art Park where I found the words “You’re never too old to dream big” written on the Monopoly top hat. This aligns very well with the culture here at Verti Insurance, a company with people of all ages who are never afraid to dream big! We continued our day by hitting the Love Park Christmas Village, stopping in the Historic District to check out the immaculately preserved Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. We then navigated our way through the crowds at the Reading Terminal Market for…MY FIRST PHILLY CHEESE STEAK! WHICH WAS AWESOME!

Our last stop before leaving the city was Paddy’s Old City Pub. I’m a very big fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia so I couldn’t leave Philly without finding the bar where the creators of the show found the inspiration for all of their crazy characters and wild antics. All of these landmarks are immaculately well preserved and full of fun stuff to do.

After walking roughly 7 miles through the city and seeing everything Yelp, my coworkers and the Philly locals had recommended we wrapped up our trip and trekked back up to Connecticut. Pennsylvania was filled with incredibly beautiful scenery and amazing residents who didn’t mind giving directions or offer preferences on the coolest things to do and see while we were there! All in all, the entire trip was 800 miles of awesome and I hope to get the chance to do some more sightseeing in the Keystone State very soon.